Air pollution and climate change areclosely linked and represent two major environmental challenges. Climate changehas been unequivocally attributed to anthropogenic emissions by the IPCC, andclimate forcing compounds are often co-emitted along with air pollutants.

The main objective of the project isto investigate the impact of climate change on air pollution by means ofChemical Transport Modelling (CTM). CTM will be applied to study aerosol andair pollutant evolution under current and future climate at the European scale,investigating the effect of the combined change in atmospheric temperature andprecipitation patterns. Data from regulatory and scientific research networks(e.g. AERONET,  ACTRIS) as well as fromsatellite will be used to compare historical simulations in different modelconfigurations to optimize the setup used for the future scenarios. ArtificialIntelligence algorithms will be tested to improve the horizontal resolution ofthe simulation output. Air pollution scenarios will focus on projections to2050, in line with CMIP6, relying on the high resolution meteorological fieldsprovided by the EURO-CORDEX program. Specific emission scenarios could also betested for winter and summer seasons with the overall aim to supportsynergistic policies addressing both climate change and air pollution. Theproject will be developed in close collaboration with the Italian NationalAgency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development(ENEA).

The candidate is expected to have asolid background in physics, math, earth/environmental sciences or relateddisciplines, as well as experience in the analysis of observational data and/ornumerical simulations. A training in atmospheric chemistry/physics, dataanalysis, atmospheric modelling, coding (e.g. in R, Fortran, matlab, python,Unix shell) are considered a key asset. A strong attitude to coding is highlydesirable.

Research activities will be hosted atthe LARMA Lab of the Dept. of Eng. “Enzo Ferrari” (http://tiny.cc/larm) and atthe AOC Lab of ENEA (http://tiny.cc/fom7yz). LARMA works on atmosphericmodelling and monitoring, collaborating with partners of the internationalresearch infrastructures ACTRIS and ICOS. LARMA is also in charge of theGeophysical Observatory of Modena and of the local AERONET sun photometer. TheAOC Lab focuses on meteorological and air quality simulations on European,national, local domains, and on atmospheric and meteorological monitoring,being partner of ACTRIS, ICOS and AERONET. ENEA is also partner of the CAMSService for the air quality forecast at European level.